Exploring the Grand Canyon Day 1

Today Katie and I drove up to the Grand Canyon.  I generally feel this is "The Place" for this trip.  Ever since we started talking about doing a road trip to move me out west the Grand Canyon was an assumed destination.  We never really talked about it, it was a given.  So with all that hype I was a little nervous the canyon wouldn't deliver.  Not to worry - it did.

But I'm jumping ahead of myself.  We got up fairly early.  Arizona doesn't do daylight savings time; now we're only 1 hour off from VA time.  So when we'd normally be getting up around 7 or 8, that became 6 or 7 this morning leading to quite an early start (which was fine by us).  We grabbed breakfast from the hotel, came back to our room, packed up for the day, and then took some stuff out of Cloud.  I'm a little nervous about having most of my worldly possessions hanging out in the car for that long while we just hike around.  It also made Cloud lighter, which felt better to drive.  Finally, we headed out.  It's about an hour and a half drive from Flagstaff to the canyon.  I thought the best part of the drive was passing the San Fransisco peaks - hilarious.

But once we were there the fun really began.  I had previously bought a national park pass - so the whole day was free (yay!).  We walked along the rim trail and stopped whenever we wanted photos.  The place is breathtaking.  I kept stopping just to marvel that I was THERE.  We took a bunch of pictures (duh), and had lunch along the way.  (That's right, I ate lunch sitting on a rock at the rim of the Grand Canyon.  NBD)  After walking 2.5-3 miles we turned around and headed back.

Some random tidbits Katie and I thought as we walked along:
1. The way the park deals with the ledge is basically "don't fall off the edge - you'll die."  In most places there wasn't anything to keep you from going over except your personal desire to stay alive.
2. The canyon is wider than we expected.  I know it's massive, but from rim to rim it's about 8.5 MILES.  I had no idea.  The photos don't really convey it.
3. It didn't look as deep as we expected.  This is (we think) because we were at the rim looking out, as opposed to the aerial views typically seen in photos.
4. Not quite as bright/colorful as anticipated.  Again, we blame the photos.  And the time of day.  We were there around 12-3, basically the hight of general mugginess.

After we drove back we had some chill time (showers, blogs, photos, zen).  Then it was off to dinner downtown.  We went to a terrible Chinese food buffet.  I can't complain, I picked it, but it really was awful.  Oh well.  Next we went to get drinks at a local bar which much more satisfactory.  I had a ginger pear cosmo - yum!  Then back to the room for an early night so we can get up to go to the Grand Canyon again tomorrow!